Labor candidate Melissa Parke pulls out of Curtin contest over Israel comments

Parke says she did not want to be a distraction during the election campaign, despite her views being ‘well known’

The Labor candidate for the West Australian seat of Curtin, Melissa Parke, has pulled out following reports that she told a public meeting last month that the way Israel treated Palestinians was “worse than the South African system of apartheid”.

Parke, formerly a federal member for Fremantle, said on Friday night that she did not want to be a distraction during the election campaign. The seat of Curtin was previously held by former Liberal party deputy leader Julie Bishop.

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Benjamin Netanyahu: the enduring hardman of Israeli politics

Ultranationalist PM has been at heart of backlash against peace efforts during 13 years in power

It was a win by the slimmest margin. Back in 1996, Benjamin Netanyahu took the Israeli election by less than 1% of the total votes.

Twenty-three years later, he has pulled off more knife-edge election acrobatics, securing a fifth term even though he tied in the election, after his main rival conceded.

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Israel election: Netanyahu wins fifth term as rival concedes

Benjamin Netanyahu has already begun to broker deals with religious and far-right parties

Benjamin Netanyahu is set to serve a fifth term as Israel’s prime minister after his main rival conceded that he had lost the election.

With 97% of votes counted, Netanyahu’s Likud party and the Blue and White party, led by former army general Benny Gantz, had tied with 35 seats each in the 120-seat house, the Knesset. However, the rightwing bloc that Netanyahu is part of had 65 in total, a comfortable majority.

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Netanyahu will now feel free to pursue hardline agenda of confrontation | Simon Tisdall

Election victory gives Israeli PM confidence he will get his way on Iran and Palestine

His supporters call him a magician. And there is truly something uncanny about how Benjamin Netanyahu has conjured up three-way US, Russian and Arab support for his hardline security and nationalist agenda. For a small country, Israel packs an ever bigger punch – and pugnacious Bibi’s likely fifth term presages a new era of escalating confrontation.

First in line for the Netanyahu treatment is Iran. He claimed credit on Monday for Donald Trump’s unprecedented decision to brand Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, including its al-Quds force, a foreign terrorist organisation. The provocative move, akin to singling out the US marine corps for punishment, bought a vengeful riposte from Tehran.

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The secret of Netanyahu’s success? A simple tale of good versus evil | Ayelet Gundar-Goshen

The Israeli prime minister is a master storyteller. But his narrative is raising a generation for whom peace would mean betrayal

Israel is a land of storytellers. Authors such as Amos Oz and David Grossman are acclaimed worldwide, and the political thriller Fauda has the nation well and truly addicted. But the best storyteller in our country is Benjamin Netanyahu. The prime minister’s talent allows him to construct a narrative so realistic, one could actually believe in it. Above all, it is his great skill in manipulating characters that makes him transcend mere politics. In fact, I would hazard a guess that Netanyahu is the best storyteller in the world.

The word “storyteller” might sound disrespectful. In the streets where I grew up, in the heart of Tel Aviv, it was usually used as an insult. Jewish mamas want their sons to be doctors, not storytellers. But storytelling is a very serious business. In the case of Netanyahu, you could say it’s deadly serious.

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Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal would bury the two-state solution

The Israeli PM’s West Bank annexation idea is likely to have had the nod from Trump

Benjamin Netanyahu’s pledge to expand Israeli sovereignty over the occupied West Bank was short on specifics. It looks, at first glance, like a typical piece of Bibi electoral gamesmanship, designed to attract rightwing and nationalist voters – and boost his hopes of tipping the balance in Tuesday’s closely fought national polls.

But Netanyahu is not simply playing politics. He has previously flirted with annexation of Judea and Samaria, as the Israeli government calls the West Bank, as part of an apparent drive to prevent the creation of a viable Palestinian state. A Haaretz poll last month found 42% of Israelis supported West Bank annexation. Netanyahu also recently suggested that Israel, in extremis, might reoccupy the Gaza Strip.

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Netanyahu vows to annex Jewish settlements in occupied West Bank

Israeli prime minister’s pledge seen as a rallying call in tight election race

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has pledged to annex Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories if he wins his country’s election on Tuesday, a dramatic last-minute rallying call to his nationalist base.

In interviews with domestic media ahead of the polls, Netanyahu repeated his promise and said he would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state by “controlling the entire area”.

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A Palestinian boy with a gun to his head asked if I was OK. I still think about him | Tariq Jordan

On a bus in the West Bank, fearing for our lives, this 13-year-old boy taught me the true power of empathy

As an actor and storyteller, I always felt that I was an extremely sympathetic person. That was a source of pride. But a couple of years ago I realised my sympathy was, in fact, pointless. It was devoid of any value whatsoever. My sympathy allowed me to merely sit as a spectator in the arena of human struggles. It achieved little for others. What I needed was to re-engage with something I had forgotten how to do: empathise.

In 2014 I found myself travelling along the West Bank on a coach with about 30 young Palestinians. This journey was full of music and dance. Darbukas and dabkes. And I was involved. It was impossible not to be. That is what empathy is. Feeling with others and not for them. But along this journey, that empathy turned quite suddenly to sympathy. Our bus had to pass a roadblock guarded by Israel Defence Forces soldiers. Guns were pointed at our driver and he was forced to halt the bus, throwing the younger members of the group 10 feet down the aisle. As we all scrambled to our seats, I immediately sat next to a young Palestinian boy of 13.

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Israeli authorities reopen two Gaza Strip crossings

Officials say Erez and Kerem Shalom crossings reopened for first time after days of hostilities

Israeli authorities have reopened the two crossings with the Gaza Strip after days of hostilities in a sign that ceasefire talks may be advancing.

Israeli and Hamas officials who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed on Sunday that the Erez and Kerem Shalom crossings were opened for the first time since Monday.

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In a destructive decade, why has no one tried to rein in Netanyahu?

As Bibi marks 10 years in power in Israel, life for the Palestinians looks bleaker than ever

It is difficult not to marvel at the scale of Benjamin Netanyahu’s personal achievement. Israel’s prime minister celebrates 10 consecutive years in power on 31 March. His country’s youngest-ever leader in 1996, he has been re-elected three times since 2009, matching David Ben-Gurion’s record. As matters stand, he has a good chance of winning again in polls on 9 April.

Netanyahu’s political achievement is altogether less marvellous. Under his grimly negative, fearful tutelage, Israeli society has shifted steadily rightwards. Attitudes to a peace settlement with the Palestinians have perceptibly hardened. Thanks in large part to Netanyahu’s uncompromising stance, the issue no longer occupies centre stage as it once did.

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Palestinian man and teenage boy killed by Israeli fire, officials say

Gaza health ministry says 10 other people have been shot as up to 30,000 people stage protests along Israeli border

Israeli forces have killed a Palestinian man and a teenage boy and shot 10 others at the Gaza frontier, at gatherings marking the anniversary of the demonstration movement, the enclave’s ministry of health said.

In an attempt to limit the huge numbers of casualties at previous rallies, Egypt has sought to broker an unofficial agreement between Hamas, the strip’s rulers who have backed the rallies, and Israel.

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Gaza braces for anniversary of demonstrations at frontier wth Israel

UN says 194 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire and close to 29,000 wounded in past 12 months

Gaza is on edge before a planned Saturday protest to mark the anniversary of mass rallies along its frontier, after a year in which Israeli soldiers have shot thousands of people.

Related: A year of bloodshed at Gaza border protests

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Israeli soldiers kill teenage Palestinian medic near Bethlehem

Volunteer medic Sajid Muzher had on reflective vest when he was shot, colleague says

Israeli soldiers shot dead a teenage Palestinian medic in the occupied West Bank, his colleagues and the Palestinian health ministry have said.

Sajid Muzher, 17, was killed at the Dheisheh refugee camp next to Bethlehem, the ministry said in a statement. Early on Wednesday morning, Israeli troops had entered the area, leading to a confrontation with residents, who threw stones. Medical teams had rushed in to provide first aid.

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Israel-Hamas relations: a predictable but fatal dance

The longtime enemies have developed a fiery pattern of trading rockets for airstrikes

It has become a near-monthly event with a predictable pattern – rockets from Gaza are traded for Israeli airstrikes. Palestinians cower in basements while Israelis hide in bomb shelters. Each flare-up signals the threat of full-blown war, but the next day it is usually over.

Israel and Hamas – the Palestinian faction that rules Gaza Strip on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean between Israel and Egypt – have fallen into a bloody and fiery dance over the past year.

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Israeli military bombs Gaza after rocket strike

  • Five wounded as Israel strikes ‘Hamas terror targets’
  • Hamas says Egypt has helped arrange a ceasefire

Israeli forces and Hamas exchanged rocket fire on Monday night amid fears of a new conflict in Gaza.

Israeli forces carried out strikes against what they called “Hamas terror targets” across the Gaza Strip, after an earlier rocket attack that destroyed a family home and wounded seven people in a neighbourhood north of Tel Aviv. The army also said it was reinforcing troops along the Gaza border and calling up reserves.

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Palestinian writer has fingers smashed in Gaza beating

Publisher says Atef Abu Saif, also a spokesperson for Fatah, almost killed by masked men

A UK publisher has condemned an attack by masked men in Gaza on a Palestinian writer and political figure, Atef Abu Saif, accusing the assailants of deliberately breaking his fingers.

Comma Press, a not-for-profit publisher that worked with Abu Saif, said that the beating on Monday night had almost killed him.

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UK will change tack on UN motions criticising Israel, says Jeremy Hunt

Policy will be to vote against claims of rights abuses by Israel brought under special protocol

The UK will oppose motions criticising rights abuses in the West Bank and Gaza that are brought to the UN’s human rights council under a special procedure dedicated to Israel’s behaviour in the occupied territories, Jeremy Hunt has said.

The move is likely to delight the Trump administration, which quit the human rights council in June last year, citing its approach to Israel. It also appears aimed at cementing the Conservative party’s relations with pro-Israel sections of the British Jewish community at a time when the Labour party is mired in criticism of its handling of antisemitism complaints.

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Rockets fired from Gaza target Tel Aviv for first time since 2014

No group immediately claims attack as Israeli army says no damage or injuries reported

Militants in Gaza have fired two rockets towards Tel Aviv, the first such attack since the war between Israel and Hamas in 2014.

Rocket sirens wailed in the densely populated Mediterranean city on Thursday evening, alerting residents to rush to bomb shelters. Videos posted online by locals showed empty streets and captured the blare of “code red” sirens, used to warn of imminent attacks.

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One-state solution gains ground as Palestinians battle for equal rights

Belief in two-state solution crumbles as up to 600,000 Israeli settlers remain on occupied land

Maybe it wasn’t the wisest choice for a Palestinian activist living under the close watch of Israeli security. But Fadi Quran was obsessed and determined: he would study nuclear physics at Stanford University.

“I got stopped at the border a lot,” he joked years later of the times he passed through Israeli passport control after graduating. “To be honest, when I first started I just wanted to win a Nobel prize in physics. I was 18 years old. I loved the stuff.”

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